


open the door, and if you're ready you'll see it

by NicolleOrgana



Category: Love Simon (2018), Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda - Becky Albertalli, Simonverse | Creekwood Series - Becky Albertalli
Genre: 5 Things, 5+1 (sort of), A mix of movie and book canon, Canon Gay Character, Early 2010s US politics, Gen, Gilmore Girls references, Heavy 2000s references, M/M, Mild Internalized Homophobia, Self-Acceptance, Simon coming to terms with his sexuality, mild homophobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-11-02 06:35:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20654507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NicolleOrgana/pseuds/NicolleOrgana
Summary: Moments covering five years in Simon's life as he figures out his sexuality, going from confusion to denial to acceptance.OR5 ages when Simon couldn't admit to himself he was gay, and the 1 when he finally could.





	open the door, and if you're ready you'll see it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gratuitous Gilmore Girls references here, but you don't really need to have seen the show to follow along.

* * *

_"You see it as a room, a tabernacle, the dark hotel. You’re in the hallway_  
_again, and you open the door, and if you’re ready you’ll see it, but_  
_maybe one part of your mind decides that the other parts aren’t ready,_  
_and then you don’t remember where you’ve been, and you find yourself_  
_down the hall again, the lights gone dim as the left hand sings the right_  
_hand back to sleep. It’s a puzzle: each piece, each room, each time you_  
_put your hand to the knob, your mouth to the hand, your ear to the_  
_wound that whispers._

_You’re in the hallway again. The radio is playing your favorite song._  
_You’re in the hallway. Open the door again. Open the door."_

_-richard siken_

~*~

9.

Simon Spier is nine years old when he first begins to suspect he might be different.

It’s just a twinge. An inkling. The seed of a thought that makes itself known and then immediately proceeds to dig a hole — burying itself deep in his subconscious, too far in for him to get a really good look at it. To even get the chance to take it out and hold it up to the light.

So he tries not to think about it. Tries to forget it. Ignore it. Tries to pretend there isn’t a nagging somewhere deep inside the truth of him that says he’s different from his family. From his friends. From the norm.

So he doesn’t think about it. But still—

~*~

The house is quiet and dark. The living room bathed in the flickering blue light of the television — the volume turned down low, subtitles turned on.

He’s cocooned in a sea of fleecesoft blankets on the sofa, Bieber’s head resting against his leg, tongue lolled out as Simon absently strokes the wiry fur at the back of his neck. Alice sits cross-legged next to them, the entirety of her body swimming in an oversized _Backstreet Boys_ t-shirt.

It’s late, and they’re meant to be sleeping, but instead they’ve snuck downstairs to watch TiVo’d episodes of _Gilmore Girls_ they’ve seen a dozen times already. It’s kind of their thing.

Even with the three and a half year age gap, Simon and Alice have always been close.

He loves these quiet moments with her. They’ve been so much rarer lately; what with her friends and schoolwork and ten thousand extracurriculars, she’s been dead on her feet by nine o’clock every single day. Way too exhausted to sneak downstairs with her kid brother in the middle of the night.

It’s nice. Quiet. Just the two of them.

The newly-minted teenager groans unexpectedly at the TV. “_Ugh_. Jess is the _worst_,” she turns to Simon, “don’t you think he’s the worst?”

Simon’s hand stills suddenly against Bieber’s head, his fingers frozen, eyes flashing up to Alice’s face, but she’s not looking at him anymore. He lets out a relieved breath he doesn’t even know why he’s holding.

He doesn’t like disagreeing with Alice (not out loud, anyway). She’s on her school's debate team, and she’s much much better at it than he is. Arguing with her is exhausting, and he never wins anyway, so what would even be the point?

But she’s _wrong_.

“No,” he says after a long moment, voice soft, unable to help himself. “I don’t.”

She pauses the show and turns to give him an incredulous look, rolling her eyes. And Simon wishes suddenly that he hadn’t opened his mouth at all. Because he _knows_ that Alice is Team Logan; has heard her voice carry passionately down the hallway that separates their bedrooms, extolling the virtues and “hotness” of Logan Huntzberger during one or two or fifty sleepovers with Lily and Becca.

But she’s just… wrong.

“Present your argument,” she says, sounding absurdly like their mother for someone who's barely thirteen.

He opens his mouth to say something but the words get stuck in his throat, so he closes it again. He imagines he looks like a goldfish. Like the way Nick looks whenever Alice speaks to him.

He doesn’t say anything, and the silence is… Heavy. _Wrong_. The air conditioner suddenly too loud in the background. And it’s weird, because silences with Alice are usually… nice? Almost peaceful? Something in his stomach twists uncomfortably.

“Well?” She says impatiently.

Patience might be a virtue, but it’s never been one of hers.

“Jess is way smarter than Logan,” Simon says, and he tries to tell himself that it’s ridiculous to feel nervous, because it’s _Alice_, who he can tell anything, but it doesn’t do any good, because… he _is_. Nervous. For some reason he doesn’t have the words to describe.

“Logan goes to Yale,” Alice says, looking smug — like she’s just answered the winning question for her debate team. “Jess never goes to college at all.”

“Jess could have gone to Yale too,” he mumbles, “if he wanted.”

“Maybe,” she says, “if he bothered to apply himself.” She sounds so much more like a teacher than she does his sister that for a moment Simon almost wants to smack her. He doesn’t.

“I don’t think Logan is _bad_,” Simon lies, because he’s always kind of hated Logan, even when you’re supposed to like him. “I just think Jess is better.”

“Okay. Why?” She’s looking at him again, her eyes narrowed, waiting. Simon turns to look at the screen, the image paused on Jess Mariano’s face, his lips frozen, turned up in a crooked smile that lasts forever.

“I don’t know…He’s just…” He trails off. He’s nine, and he doesn’t have the words to articulate the feeling squirming inside his chest. Twisting in his gut.

He opens his mouth, but the words freeze somewhere inside of him; refuse to come out. It’s a sentiment he won’t be able to articulate until he’s fifteen, re-watching the series in his bedroom late at night on his laptop, Alice gone off to her first semester of college.

It’s, _because he’s smart but pretends he’s not… like he doesn’t want anyone to look too closely. Because he’s _more_ than what people think of him, but he hides it away, like a secret. A hidden depth._ And Simon’s always thought of Logan as shallow, in every way a person can possibly be.

And, _do you see the way his eyes go soft when he looks at Rory, especially when she isn’t looking back?_

And, _it’s the curve of his crooked smile, and the brown of his eyes, and the way he always _tries_ so hard, never giving up on the things that are important to him._

It’s, _because he was still in love with Rory, even after a year apart. He buried his love for her down in his chest, like a secret, holding it close, gripping it with clenched fists, even when everyone around him told him to give it up. To let it go. Because loving Rory was like a part of his identity. Who even was Jess if he wasn’t in love with Rory?_

But the words don’t come, so instead he shrugs and says, “Jess is just better,” and he goes back to petting Bieber, and pretending like he doesn’t have _Thoughts_™ on the matter.

_And he’s way cuter than dumb Logan,_ Simon thinks but doesn’t say. Because he’s nine, not stupid.

Because he sees the way Nick looks at Alice, the way Jess looks at Rory, the way his dad looks at his mom — all of them with giant hearts in their eyes, and dopey smiles on their faces — and he’s pretty sure his face has never made anything close to a similar expression. And besides, it’s just not cool for a boy to admit another boy is good looking, even if they’re all secretly thinking it.

So he doesn’t look too closely at it. Tries not to wonder if he’s broken.

And anyway, he thinks Leah is pretty, and Rory, and Julia from school.

So maybe it’s not the same, and maybe he doesn’t feel his eyes turning into hearts when he looks at them.

So what?

Alice gives him A Look. Her lips twisted, head cocked slightly to one side like she does when she’s working on a math problem in her head, but she doesn’t say anything else, and Simon is grateful. She un-pauses the show, and they settle back into a comfortable silence as they watch the antics of the Stars Hollow residents unfold in front of them.

The next time Alice groans at the sight of Jess Mariano, Simon knows better, and he keeps his mouth shut.

~*~

He doesn't think about it again. Not for a while, at least.

But still, the inkling is there now, the seed well and truly buried. Shovel tossed away somewhere he’ll never be able to find it.

There’s no digging this back up.

No stopping it now.

Roots take hold. Twisting into gray matter. Into his soul.

It grows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you tell I'm Team Jess? Because I'm Team Jess. Sorry not sorry to any Logan fans. That is all.
> 
> *Middle of the night and un-beta'd. May edit if I wake up in the morning and discover this us utter garbage.* -9/18/19 1am

**Author's Note:**

> Story title taken from _You Are Jeff_ by Richard Siken, which I highly recommend.


End file.
